


Nightmares

by AceQueenKing



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Prothean language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-22 00:31:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11955948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceQueenKing/pseuds/AceQueenKing
Summary: Liara and Javik get stuck on Noveria overnight during a mission.





	Nightmares

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ScientistSalarian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScientistSalarian/gifts).



"We are going to die here,” Javik moaned.

Liara frowned, ignoring his complaining.  He sat, legs folded, in the corner of the room. Every bit of his body radiated displeasure. She watched out of the corner of her eye, observing Prothean dejection from the curve of his spine, the curl of his lips.  He turned to look at her,  and his eyes were hard; pitiless.

He was _nothing_ like the Protheans she had dreamed of as a child. If her mother was still alive – and Liara was the reason that she wasn't – she would have laughed. _Not what you expected, little wing?_ She would have said, a quirk of her lips betraying what she truly thought of the situation. Her mother would not be surprised by the warlike tendencies of Javik. _Species don't dominate by playing nice,_ she would say. Her mother had made it a point to study living societies; Liara had studied only one, a long-dead one. And since there was so little evidence, it was easy to imagine different ways that the Protheans may, perhaps, have lived. 

Now she wished she had read her mother's studies. She didn't know how to approach someone so...warlike. And she wasn't sure she wanted to. She found their conversations intellectually stimulating and challenging, which was refreshing. On the other hand, he had _eaten_ Salarian brains.

“I hope you have made your peace, asari,” he grumbled, rubbing his arms over his armor.

“We'll find a way out,” she said, striving to remain calm. If nothing else, Shepard would come for them eventually. She and Garrus had gone on to Artemis Tau, hoping for survivors; Liara and Javik had stayed behind on Noveria, trying to find what had happened to their security league that had gone suddenly, chillingly silent.

Which had gone well until Noveria, being Noveria, had turned on them; the weather had turned brutal and they were now frozen in Firebase White. The Noverian weather was unpredictable, and the Firebase’s resources were slim.

Javik looked at her but said nothing. He sighed, and somehow that subdued reaction still broke her heart.

“We won't starve,” she said, trying to remain positive. “Shepard’s bound to be back for us in a day or two.”

“We may wish we had starved if she isn’t,” He said, ever a master pessimist. He stood up, walking toward her. She held out a can and he took it. “It would be a more merciful end than being taken by the Reapers.”

She sighed but said nothing. She did not understand him, for all that she had studied his people. She would _never_ understand him. He was the last survivor of the _Protheans_ ; the most powerful race of the previous cycle. An enlightened race.

A race that took slaves and ate their dead, evidently. If Javik was to be believed, which she wasn't entirely sure she was.

He wordlessly opened it, sniffing at the food. She waited for a biting commentary on it as he carefully nibbled at it, and she was not disappointed.

“The food in this cycle is so disgusting,” He muttered. “In my day, we did not bother with _cooking_ to reduce flavor.”

“Sorry we don't eat Salarian brains,” She said, smoothing her fringe back. She pulled out her own can and nibbled at it; tuna. It seemed fine to her. A bit dry. It was her first meal since the storms had started here; she could not stop herself from devouring the whole thing in a few seconds.

“How long do you think the storm will last?” He said, ignoring her jibe. All four eyes swiveled toward her. His glare was intense, as always, but she liked that about him. “We need to decide how to measure out our supplies.”

She nodded; rationing was a good idea. She pulled up her omni. “I'm going to try to hack into a weather satellite.”

He did not argue. He turned away, ostensibly looking through their supplies. She busied herself with her omni, only keeping her focus on her supplies. She was only vaguely aware of him and liked him better this way. She scanned through the omni, several times over. The extra-net connection was almost non-existent; the storm had obscured nearly all the satellites. She knew that was bad news. The longer their connection was down, the longer it would take for Shepard or the Normandy to find her.

“Eight cans of food, all of them _cooked_ ,” he noted. She suppressed the urge to comment on his doing what she had already done, but after his initial snide comment he left her alone, so she let him double check the stores in peace.

\---

Javik settled down on one of the abandoned bedrolls they’d discovered; it was cold in the room, and he somehow managed to look grateful as Liara handed him an extra blanket from another empty bed.

“My gratitude,” he said, and she nodded. He held out his hand to reach for another pillow and it brushed against hers; they both froze, for just a moment. She looked up at him, and an odd look blinked through his five eyes, but it was over before she could comment on it.

He turned away from her, the spell broken. Liara tried her best to keep an eye on him, hoping for another word, but he closed his eyes, and the two fell asleep.

She was surprised by how quickly she fell asleep; despite her discomfort and the cold; sleep bit her and sank into her with an almost relentless poison. Perhaps dealing with the stress of the day had been, perhaps, more exhausting than she’d thought.

 Perhaps it had been dealing with Javik; much as she hated to admit it, as fascinating as she found him, she always wound up exhausted, too consumed with all the things she couldn’t say. His moods were…mercurial, to say the least. And unlike her mother, Javik’s mood swings were hard to predict.

She dreamt of the same thing she had dreamt many times in the past months. She wasn’t even surprised to wake up back on her long-gone ship, the Shadow Broker’s ship she’d “inherited” from the last Shadow Broker. Nor was she surprised to see her mother take Feron’s place, her cool eyes welcoming Liara so true to life that they made her doubt, as they had every night, whether or not this was a dream.

“A nice set-up, little wing,” her mother said, examining her nails before slowly rising. It was not until she was asleep that Lira remembered, exactly, the grace her mother exuded in life. An icy hand reached up and grasped her cheek, and in her dream, Liara leaned into the touch in a way she never could when awake.

“You would have liked it,” she said, knowing her mother would. How much of it would Benezia have wanted to use for her research? Hundreds, perhaps thousands of records. Liara dreamed of all the futures that never were, and wept for them.

“He calls to you, Liara,” her mother said, eyes almost mischievously dancing, like she was telling a great joke. Like all her mother’s greatest jokes, this one was incomprehensible to Liara.

“Mother, I don’t understand – “

“He calls.” She folded Liara into an embrace, hooking her hand behind Liara’s crest and pulling her close. “He calls,” mother whispered, and the world turns dark, and then – then she was gone.

Liara returned to the waking world with her blood pumping, lungs burning, the sound of battle around her. A shot of acrid fear burned her heart, and she awoke with her hand on the trigger of her pistol.

She breathed deeply, glancing around her, only realizing that there was no enemy who could harm her after a few moments. Javik was sitting up on his cot, his pistol in his hands.  His eyes were not open, but she could tell her sensed her from the way his head swiveled toward her, his pistol hand swinging her way.

“ _Alluvrag_!” He snarled, and Liara felt her heart plunge. Somehow in his sleep, Javik had pulled out his translator – and he was in some sort of sleeping terror. She’d studied the prothean language of course, but so much of it was conjecture. She thought he had said _enemy_ , but wasn’t entirely sure. Much of her own codex had been guesses – and many of those guesses, as Javik was so often reminding her, were wrong. She swallowed, her throat suddenly tight, and placed the pistol on the ground. Could protheans read pheromones, intentions? She’d heard Javik mention Shepard’s feelings toward Tali were “screaming” before, so she tried to force herself to remain calm.

“I’m not your enemy,” she said, before remembering he couldn’t hear her. She sighed. She hadn’t wanted to try to speak the Prothean tongue around him, too shy to bring it up yet, but if he would stop waving a gun around in his sleep, she’d put up with him complaining about her accent. “ _Nelesa alluvrag_. _Sadicdru_.” She raised a hand up into the air, palm out, and hoped he’d understood her desire to be friends. “ _Sadicdru_ ,” she repeated.

He lowered the gun slightly, shaking his head. “ _Sadicdru_ ,” he repeated. “ _Aisimya_?”

“Liara,” she said, taking it as a good sign he'd asked for further identification. She took a step forward. “T’Soni. Asari.” He stared at her, his gun lowering just a fraction more, his grip looser, and Liara took it as permission to step forward again. Again, he lowered it a fraction, and she stepped forward. In a few short steps she had crossed the space between them. Hesitantly, she put a hand on his gun, her fingers lightly tapping on his own.

She pulled it from him at the same moment, he shook, waking up.

“Liara?” He said, confused, and no longer feeling in danger, she noted for the first time the rich timbre of his natural voice, undiluted by the translator. “ _Kakiye’ma hadathalos_?”

What happened, he'd asked, but she didn't know how to answer. She tried to remember the word for _nightmare_ but failed, chosing instead to sit next to him on the thin cot. She could feel his body heat pressing against him, and he looked at her, expecting a response.

“ _Voynar_ ,” she said, gently, the best word she could remember for this situation. _War._ He nodded and sat silent near her a moment, then reached out, grabbing the translator and putting it back in his ear. “

Your accent is atrocious, T’Soni.”

She laughed gently and leaned on his shoulder. He placed an arm around her shoulder, and for the first time in the snow, she felt warm. There was, perhaps, hope for Javik yet.

“Tell me,” she said, daring to glance up at him, “about your cycle.”

“If you wish,” he said, and to her surprise, he did – without even a single snide comment.


End file.
